Is Intellectual certainty greater than sensual certainty?

G

The question pits current guesses against inherited, hormone driven, urges.

Since progress usually means discarding old guesses and adopting new ones, and DNA and hormone systems adapt slowly, neither one is certainty.

To say one or another always applies is to tip the game itself to intellectual certainty regardless if one holds that one has greater sensual certainty. We are middle creatures; we know too much to truly be true skeptics and we know too little to truly be dogmatists. The desire for certainty is the desire for a place that doesn't establish truth by the process of reason for it denies that reasoning is a process. Searching for the truth is not the same as having the truth -- in other words, radical skepticism is actual a form of dogmatic faith. We are also middle creatures in the fact we are both a thinking entity and an entity that exists. The certainty of pleasure and pain is hard to deny in the immediate reality of experiencing them; yet during the calm reflection absent of those immediate feelings the mind can and does doubt the body. Intellectual certainty seems so certain in some truths of mathematics until we try to answer the existential nature of mathematics itself (which is a very long philosophical side story). Our certainty varies, or our doubts do, by moment, by thought, by person, and always will. The see-saw of certainty, or is it doubt, of one or another is one certainty we can be certain will continue.

I don't think in terms of greatness here ...it depends on the question asked, which of these might be more appropriately used all thought, and both of these 'certainties' include thought, are necessary for man to find his place in the world

i say no!

intellectual certainty would be backed up by research, logic, evidence etc.

sensual certainty doesn't exist

You can be certain of your experiences. E.g. I feel hot.

You can not be certain that your feelings reflect reality. E.g. Your feeling of heat may be caused by a hot day or a temperature from an infection or you might be dreaming you died and went to Hell.

Science is based on making logical models and check to see if their predictions match experience of experiments.

Experience and logic go hand in hand.

Sensual experiences are created by brain logic and sensory data. E.g. Hotness is an interpretation form heat censors and brain interpretation.

Inasmuch as they are both subject to the capacity of the person claiming certainty, they are potentially at least equally uncertain.

Graham P is right . You 'experience' heat.There may be no heat in the atmosphere.But the experience is real. There must be some reason for the experience. If it is an illusion the brain may be sick.

Intelectual Certainity is FACTS...undisputable..

I have my doubts about 'sensual' certainity

Is purpose greater than instinct? I tend to think so.

That depends on how horny you might be.